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Sunday, 29 July 2012

Oh I am just bouncing off the walls with excitement about all the wonderful entries to my Bouncing (narrative style) event. Every single one is a winner! Thank you so much to all the lovely participants, for taking the time to celebrate the act of bouncing with such creativity. We have poems, limericks, prose, haiku and even a citation from Blogville's Chief of Police.

Bouncing came easy to me, once I
discovered the fun of the back yard, it suddenly struck Me. This is my happy
time, it's what makes me bounce, when Mom or Dad come out and chase me around
the 87 acres, about every third or fourth step I bounce, and then I go after
Shadow to join in, and the real bouncing around on her begins. Now I have every
body involved, then Bites shows up and the party is on.

My second best bouncing is chasing
after something, ball, Frisbee, rabbit, just anything that goes fast, even
Sidebite.

My bestest bounces come when I Bark,
see I am a little girl with a high pitch yell, so's, to get my message out I
put my all into it, I squat down, let it go, and bounce backwards till the
problem is gone.

Bouncing by Sidebite:

One: I love to play footies while
Dad walks and I chase after his feet, bouncing and attacking, then get another
run, bounce in, attack, growl and do this till I can't move.

Two: Dad thinks he has a recliner,
WRONG, by Scottie Law, It's MINE!. We come in during the late evening and get a
snack, then Dad lies down on the floor in front of my recliner and we play
ball, or wrestle with a suffie, till I am Tired. Now I got him, I take a run
and bounce on his tummy and into MY recliner.

Jazzi and AddyAddy and
I loved to run and play and bounce around. One of our favorite games, was to
run and chase each other around the house. Our main floor has a big square so
we would run around the square several times and then we each took a leaping
bounce from about 2-3 ft from the love seat and land right smack on our love
seat.

Addy: Wait
Jazzi, I don't think it was exactly 3 feet for you, I mean you aren't even 3 ft
long!! Maybe more like 1 ft.

Jazzi: Hey!!
I am telling the story here Miss Dogzilla! You just pipe down over there!!

Addy: Well, I
think you should just be accurate, lol

Jazzi: yah ok.
Anyway we bounced so hard on it, that the love seat would bounce back on its
back legs and then make a BIG clunk when it hit the floor again!! bol. We would
bounce right back off, take off running again. I would chase Addy cuz she is
scared of me

Addy: Oh NO,
you did not just say that Jazzi!! I am by NO means scared of You. PLEAZE!!!! If
anything, you run from me cuz you know that I will getcha!! You do know that I
could sit on you Jazzi?

After we
switched turns, we would do it all over again and we had a blast!! It did drive
Mom nuts but we didn't care, cuz we have tons of fun bouncing on and off of the
love seat BOL!!! (We don't have a picture of the actual bounce but this is us
after the bounce on our love seat.)

JazziSeeing
how this is the Olympics, I can do a Standing Bounce!! It is tricky to
do and takes time to get it just right.

I stand
or sit on the Living room floor and Mom sits there and asks, Jazzi, do you want
a treat? I reply by Barking.

Now when
I Bark, my front paws both bounce off of the floor. It must be very
entertaining because Mom sits there and laughs like crazy. Alls I know is
that it gets me a treat and that's all I am interested in. Hey! A girl has to
worry about the important things right??

As you all might remember, when I lived with
Jazzi, I discovered that the grand-peeps had a trampoline. Jazzi in all
her bossiness tried to get my not to go on it. Well...as usuaI I didnt
listen to her, bol. I went ahead and got on it with the grand-peeps. As they
bounced, I bounced and I went so high in the air. I actually think that all my
paws were in the air at the same time and it was so much fun. I could feel the
air on my face and my ears flopped all around when I bounced. I even took my
toy with me and jumped with it in my mouth. I enjoyed it so much that when they
were on it bouncing, I was right there bouncing with them and having the time
of my life. Just call me the Bouncing Addy!!

Neither of us Beaglebratz due much bouncin’BUTT I,
the Diva Shasta duz a little I guess. When there iz sumthin’out in the
yard that me an’brudder Shiloh go chasin’it – sumtimez when I am runnin’an’az I
start slowin’down, then I kinda start duin’sorta bounce on
my pawz. It iz really kinda of a run, hop-bounce – mom sez it’z
kinda like I’m slowin’down my runnin’an’start bouncin’up an’down
butt I am still movin’forward a little – Shiloh duzn’t due this.

I, the Diva Shasta, just feel so furry much happy
when I due this - an'I know that whatever I am chasin'iz furry much impressed
an'a little scared cuz I am showin'my tail held furry much straight up like I
AM the boss an'nobuddy better mess with me.

I did include a pikchure of me restin'up AFTER I bin
out in the yard duin'my run-hop-bounce chase.

Tuesday, 24 July 2012

Finally, we come to the results of my 'Science of Human Behaviour' project (for background, see 1st July post).

I have to tell you that when I first embarked on this study, Gail was a bit uneasy, saying "I hope you realise that you have chosen a very complicated subject Bertie, I fear you might have bitten off more than you can chew".

Well I reminded her that I have, I believe, an infinite capacity for chewing, so that really shouldn't be a problem.

One month later, I have come to the conclusion that Gail was right and I am having to eat my own words....

Oh you have no idea how hard it has been, trying to make sense of all the fascinating reports you kindly sent me about the behaviour of the humans in your household.

My starting point, naturally, was a sociobiological perspective. Surely, I thought, all human actions can be interpreted in Darwinian terms as evolutionary aids to survival.

To render the data more manageable, my first step was to divide it into broad categories. By and large this worked, and most of the reported behaviours fell into one of the following four groups.

Group C: Poor logic shown by human (e.g. shaving off their own furs then complaining of the cold)

Group D: Extreme excitement or distress of human when sport is on TV (you should have seen Gail watching the Tour de France last weekend...)

So far so good.

But then I tried to work out the adaptive rationale behind all these behaviours, and started to lose confidence.

Can one explain the human urge to spend time dressing up their pup in cute frocks in terms of the survival of the fittest? What has refusing to share a cheeseburger with your dog to do with altruism? Can there really be a 'selfish gene' for not allowing a pet enough computer time?

Feeling quite overwhelmed, I confided in my neighbour Jake. It seems I asked the right dog.

Jake tells me he knows all about human behaviour 'cos he shares a household with a nearly qualified Jungian psychotherapist!

So, I learn it was a big mistake ever to imagine that the reductive, mechanistic methods of scientific analysis would be the right approach. Apparently what most of the respondents to my survey will need, for their behaviour to be understood, is years of (expensive) individual therapy in which their subconscious can be thoroughly scrutinised and their dream world subject to in depth exploration.

Oh and Jake tells me he'll accept gravy bones as commission for every new client he brings to his human.

As for me, I have decided in future to stick to the natural sciences.

PS Remember it's my Olympic Bouncing Event on Sunday. You will absolutely love all the entries, I promise!

Friday, 20 July 2012

I have been watching the Tour de France on TV a lot these past three weeks. Not my choice you understand, but it's what you get when your owner is a big cycling enthusiast.

So anyway I have a question.

How is is that in the Tour, staging a successful 'breakaway' from the peloton (see, I have mastered the jargon) is considered a brave and impressive achievement, but when I copy this strategy in the woods near Aberdeen, my actions meet with strong condemnation and threats of 'grounding'?

OK, I admit that my breakaway yesterday afternoon was inspired by an instinct to chase deer (again) rather than by an ambition to wear the maillot jaune. But that aside, I see very little difference.

Had messrs Wiggins, Froome, Millar or Cavendish managed to race ahead out of sight and stay away for two and a half hours before being reunited with their pack, I think Gail would have been leaping about with excitement, in a good way.

In fact she was, apparently, leaping about a lot when I made the break (she even phoned her friends Yvonne and Neil after about an hour) but, it seems, this was not at all a good sort of excitement...

Even the greatest of cyclists can tire of the solo ride, and likewise eventually I did start missing Gail's company and tried to find my way back to her. I had to bark a lot so she could find me in the lush undergrowth (not, I think, a problem ever encountered by Lance Armstrong).

Can you believe that later, what Gail seemed most upset about was that she'd missed the ITV4 highlights of the final Pyrenean stage of the Tour?

Thursday, 19 July 2012

Earlier this week I told you about the cr*p so-called ‘present’ Gail brought me back from Switzerland (cheers Deccy for suggesting that most
appropriate adjective….)

Let me tell you, that was
just the start of it.

You know, I could just about
accept the fact that my human was going off to visit her beloved but now elderly
and wheelchair-bound godmother Doris in Luzern and that as she
had to fly it would all be a bit complicated to take me along etc. I
also understand that animals might not be welcome in the care home where Doris now stays.

Fine.

So why then does the first holiday photo I’m shown feature Gail out for a walk, clearly in ENGLAND[1] and being unfaithful to me with
another dog? And no Gail I am not interested at all in hearing about Billy's immaculate behaviour on this walk up St Martha's Hill, what a perfect chap he is, what big, expressive eyes he has and what a calm demeanour, why can't I be more like that and so on and so on ad nauseam. Grrrrh!

And why does the next photo, taken by Gail, show her friends Kathryn and Steve half way up a mountain on a long and clearly fox terrier friendly walk in the FRENCH Alps[2]?

Oh no! Here are some of Gail's photos
from what she claims is one of her top five walks in the whole world, in
Luzern along the lake between the Kapellbrücke and the Verkehrshaus der Schweiz.

How can a walk without me
even be in her top five hundred?

Then I learn that in Doris’s
care home some of the residents are allowed to keep their dogs with them – Gail
saw a Yorkie and a Lhasa Apso when she was visiting[3]. So most certainly I could have come along after all.

And finally. I have it on
good authority that Luzern is a popular tourist destination crammed full of
shops selling fluffy and eminently de-stuffable St Bernards, cows wearing bells and
whistling marmots, all excellent toys available at reasonable prices[4].

I could even have fun
silencing a cuckoo clock, if it came to that.

Footnotes by Gail

[1] Surrey, actually. The flight to Switzerland was cancelled due to
thunderstorms in the Gatwick area, so my departure was delayed for a day.

[2] Before visiting my godmother I stayed for a couple
of days with my Surrey-based friends in their Alpine chalet in Samoëns, France.

Monday, 16 July 2012

Oh. She's telling me all about how she visited a place in Luzern called the Rosengart Museum where she saw lots of paintings by this Picasso chappie, and she thought what I would like best would be a postcard of one of them...

Thursday, 12 July 2012

First, the Olympics! Just a reminder to keep the entries for the Bouncing (narrative style) event coming in. I am already bouncing off the walls with delight at the ones I've seen so far, they are all brilliant! Remember that it's your WORDS about Bouncing - not photos - that I'm looking for here. Entries to be emailed to soi718(AT)abdn(DOT)ac(DOT)uk. For full details of the event, click here.

Secondly, on the Boffin* front, don't worry, I haven't forgotten about my promised Science of Human Behaviour post! Thank you so much for your fascinating contributions. It is taking longer than I anticipated to synthesise all the data, but I shall have answers for you, er, in due course....

Thirdly, my assistant Gail will be away for the next few days. Most inconvenient from an Olympics perspective I must say. So if you have sent in a 'Bouncing' entry but have not yet received a polite acknowledgement, well that is 'cos a certain person has gone swanning off to visit friends in Switzerland and is ignoring her computer. (Don't worry about me though, I am staying at home and being cared for by Gail's friend Marie-Thérèse, and am hoping to be spoilt rotten...)

Monday, 9 July 2012

You're out for a walk with your owner. Not exactly a walk, more a galloping, gambolling frenzy of activity, all bouncing legs, flapping ears, manic tail and hypersensitized nose.

You're through the gate. The slope below the rough coastal path falls away steeply to Loch Torridon. The native trees planted a few years back are flourishing, protected from the voracious grazing of the local deer and sheep by the six foot fence.

You are let off the lead.

Your owner is happy, enjoying the rare sunshine and the midge-deterrent breeze, admiring the majestic, glacier-sculpted Torridonian mountains, lost in a Precambrian reverie.

You detect a faint, enticing whiff of large mammal. All senses now on high alert, you hear a rustle in the undergrowth, catch a momentary glimpse of antlers disappearing into a thicket of larger, older pines and birches.

You seize the forbidden moment and make off in pursuit.

You expect, half hope, your owner will join the chase. But no, she stays on the path, calls "Bertie, COME!" a few times but you affect not to hear.

You feel a pang of guilt and wonder whether to return. But the scent of the deer and the instinct to chase is strong. Your owner is out of sight.

The ground is steep and rough. You stumble between massive boulders. The trespassing stag dances lightly over the heather that for you is tough, scratchy and impenetrable. You know deep down that this is not an even contest. You are by now disheartened, panting and even trembling a little.

You think of your owner, of the bag of treats she always carries. Where is she? Suddenly the hunt seems less important.

You panic a little, zigzag back up the hill and find the path. Your spot your owner, just a few yards away, perched on a smooth slab of gneiss, waiting patiently.

You expect a treat. None is forthcoming. Your owner pats you on the head, but in an offhand, slightly frosty manner, and continues to walk along the path.

Thursday, 5 July 2012

Sorry, bitches (I hope that is an acceptable form of address for my lady dog friends, one has to be so careful these days) but today I am going to tackle a topic which is primarily of concern to those of us of the leg-cocking gender.

Perhaps there are some readers who are unaware of the difficult bladder-related decisions that the male dog faces when out for his daily walk. To be pee or not to be pee, that is the question.

You probably imagine we just stroll out of the house without a care in the world, no native hue of resolution...sicklied over with the pale cast of thought, and casually lift our leg against the nearest lamppost or tree, and that's all there is to it.

Oh how wrong you are.

Hamlet himself would have considered it outrageous fortune that we are confronted with such a sea of troubles when it comes to the business of urinating. Their currents turn awry doesn't even begin to describe it.

One one hand, we know that we are supposed, by the end of the walk, to have emptied our bladder. A full bladder being, of course one of the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to. But on the other hand, who can tell how many times during that same walk, we will feel the compulsion to mark our territory? And we all know there's nothing make's a dog grunt and sweat under a weary life more than firing pee-mail blanks, as it were.

Ay, there's the rub.

It is, I admit, a bit easier when one has an established routine, and can carefully calibrate one's output.

The problem comes if, like me, you live with a human who enjoys exploring the undiscover'd country. So you have no idea when you set out, how long the walk will be, nor lie of the land. How then is a dog to determine his volume and frequency of releases?

Now please, girls, stop your sniggering!

I speak here of enterprises of great pith and moment.

Oh. Apparently I need to apologise to Mr William Shakespeare...

PS Many thanks for your amazing responses to my previous post. Boy have you set me some tough challenges!

Sunday, 1 July 2012

I am aware that I have in the last few months been rather quiet on the science front.

Time, I think, to remedy this sorry state of affairs. I fear that, as Olympic fever takes hold of Blogville, there is a danger that more cerebral matters are being neglected...

Now I know that many of my friends do not share my good fortune in living in a scientific household. Well I am a helpful sort of a chap, and would like you to benefit too from some of the advantages of I enjoy.

The topic I plan to tackle next in my world famous Canine Science series is a particularly challenging one, namely the science of human behaviour. This is, I admit, a change of direction for me - I have hitherto tended toward natural science subjects, physics, geology etc. - but not to worry, I am sure it will be no problem as I am young enough still to believe I can tackle anything!

The world is awash with books written by humans, endeavouring to explain the psychology of us dogs, but I fear that the reverse is not true. When it comes to material aimed at clarifying, in a canine-relevant manner, how members of the species Homo sapiens think and behave, the shelves are bare.

Do the humans in your orbit exhibit any strange and disturbing quirks of behaviour that you are at a loss to understand? Do they act in ways that seem to you wholly illogical and deeply worrying?

If so, I would like you to tell me all about it, by leaving a comment on this post. If you are worried about confidentiality, then just include the words 'TOP SECRET', and no-one will know*. I am in no doubt that you will provide me with much fascinating material to chew over.

In a week or so (exact timing depending on the volume and nature of the issues you raise) I shall attempt to put your minds at ease by providing a rational, evidence-based and dog-friendly explanation for everything that your human does, however apparently bizarre.

Oh you can rest assured there will be no recourse to quackery and pseudo-scientific hocus pocus in this blog!

*Gail is a bit concerned that this protocol will not pass the ethics committee, but hey....

About Me

Hi, I'm Bertie, a wire-haired fox terrier pup. I live with Gail in Aberdeen, Scotland. An old Westie called Hamish used to live here but he died on 18th February 2010 (exactly the same day I was born). People tell me that he used to have a blog and that I have big pawprints to fill. That's a bit too much responsibility for a very young puppy - and anyway, I intend to make my own mark!
(Gail says that Hamish could certainly have taught me a thing or two about marking stuff....)